Monthly Archives: July 2009

For roughly 24 years I lived in the same apartment, in the same building, in the same area of Bombay. I threw my first proper tantrum at 13 when my parents began considering moving to a another building down the road so that we could have had a bigger apartment. We didn’t. I don’t know if I tantrum did the trick but it helped.

In HK, I’ve moved twice in three years. And I enjoyed it. I found the experience of uprooting and replanting myself in a different environment exhilerating. I take pleasure in reviewing my life as I store it away in boxes and decide what to keep and what to discard. I love the discovery of the new neighbourhood, the remaking of ours (our bakery, our market, our laundry) and most of all the creation of a new home. I enjoy wiping the slate clean and starting over. I relish the reinvention involved in the process of rebuilding the nest.

My only other experience with moving was in Hyderabad when I was living with my uncle and cousin and we moved house. It was a disaster, enough to scare me off moving for life. But in retrospect that was because my uncle and cousin epitomise disorganisation and, much as I love them, laziness. They had a four bedroom houseful bursting to the seams with stuff… and they did not pack till the morning of the move. You can imagine.

Moving brings out my inner organiser. It struck me that maybe the reason that I decided to be messy (and it was something of a conscious decision) was because somewhere along the way I realised that my organising streak could be extreme. When packing, I want each individual box to have its own theme – not just bathroom but bathroom-cleaning, kitchen electronics separate from kitchen-spices, nice clothes distinct from winter clothese distinct from house wear. No dumping of whatever fits for me. Every time I looked into a box that V had packed I wanted to tear my hair out.

I was looking forward to unpacking.

The new house is a dream. There is more storage space than we no what to do with. I have room for sub-cateories and micro-categories. This time we will not be a mess.

So. As much as I would like to think I’m a rational human being and a fair-minded person, I have to admit I have my peeves. And as I grow older, I grow more fixed in them. Or maybe more aware of them. And aware in a way that doesn’t make me want to give (all of) them up, though some I know I should get over.

Anyway, below are a list of my pet peeves. I’m prejudiced against:

1) People who don’t like animals. Almost all of my close friends love animals. The few that aren’t crazy about them, are not the “ewww a dog” variety either. If you’re a friend of mine and don’t like animals, you must be a really awesome person. It’s not like I go around asking people their attitude to animals, though I probably should! But it just happens that my friends turn out to be fond of animals, even the ones I thought wouldn’t be. It got me thinking about whether animal lovers have a personality that I’m attracted to.

2) People that vote right wing. Even though I don’t live in the US, I would be shocked to have friends who voted Republican in general and for Bush, in particular. I just assume that any person with half a brain would be anti-Bush. Similarly, in India, I’m shocked by supporters of right wing parties like the BJP and Shiv Sena. I just assume “normal” people don’t vote for them, or at least the kind of people I would associate with. This does get me in trouble at parties.

3) People who don’t like to read. The biggest irony – or the biggest proof of love – is that I married one. Maybe I do project a slight disdain for V’s non-reading and that’s why he counters it with so much anti-reading nonsense.

4) People who are obsessively tidy or anal about organising. I used to be a super-tidy person. But now I’m not. And I feel it’s a better way to be. People who are too tidy give me the creeps. And I find people who are too organised similarly strange, maybe because they generally tend to be high maintenance. Most of my friends are disorganised and messy. My husband is not. Hmm.

5) People from cities other than Bombay. I think Bombay is the centre of the world. The only other places that really impress me are New York, London and Paris. And now HK. If you’re from anywhere else, I think you’re small town (and this is not a good thing in my mind). Although since I married a “small town” boy, now I’m more open-minded about that. Yes, I know this is stupid.

6) People from South Bombay or “townies” as we used to call them. The minute someone says they’re from “town”, I expect them to be snobby. They almost always are. The people that aren’t are my friends. I cannot bear the sense of entitlement that townies seem to emit. (I am sure that people from further down the suburbs in Bombay think the same of me.)

7) Ditto for people from ISCE schools (in Bombay) or International Schools. In other cities, the situation is different. But in Bombay, because there are decent SSC schools (ISCE students would disagree here but that just proves my point) and because the ISCE schools involve paying substantial fees whereas the SSC schools are subsidized by the state, ISCE kids in Bombay are grow up fraternising only with people of the same economic class as them, which is generally upper middle class. Again, this makes for a slight sense of entitlement. For this reason, I am one of the few people in HK, I think, who would not want my kids to go to the “best” school”.

8) People with “vernacular” elements in their English or regional accents. I know this is stupid because I’ve realised that everyone, including me, speaks accented English. There is no longer a correct accent. But while I find other nationalities’ accents charming, within India, I have to make a conscious effort to get over people with a strong regional accent. I find the South Indian accent most disturbing. Just my luck to marry a South Indian. While I can get over the accent, I find stuff like “off the fan” really really icky.

9) Gold. I think it’s the instinctive rebel in me that developed this prejudice in reaction to the slavish fascination Indian people of a certain age seem to have for it and how it seems to signify people’s conservative quotient. The minute I realised this is what the aunties insist upon, I decided I didn’t like it. Even though now I’ve realised that gold does suit our skin tone, I still resist wearing it.

10) Fair skin. I have striven my whole life till recently to be as dark skinned as possible. This was in solidarity with my sister who was born a few shades darker than me and was always at the receiving end of rude comments. My quest to be darker consisted of refusing to stay in the shade, refusing to wear compact powder or foundation (last year, I shocked the make-up girl at the Revlon counter by saying I didn’t want a foundation that made me fairer though I didn’t mind one that made me darker) and to date, to bleach my face knowingly (I suspect my recent facial has bleach in it but it’s really hard to argue these things in HK). Now I’ve realised that I actually do look better without a tan but whitening products are still out. I also tend to be nicer to people who have darker skin. Go figure!

Sometimes I think I’m so jaded. And then I get as excited as a kid over some natural phenomenon.

This morning I saw a solar eclipse for the first time in my life. And it’s one of those memories I want to fix in my mind forever.

I remember when there were solar eclipses in India, everyone would get super kicked and then nothing would happen. I don’t know what we expected – total blackness, I guess. In HK where grey darkness in the day is the norm, I guess the effect wouldn’t be so dramatic.

Anyway, the eclipse today was only a partial one in HK but because our office is in the east and our big boss rather thoughtfully brought along special viewing glasses, we all gathered there at 9.26 am which was when the eclipse would be at the maximum.

I, of course, behaved like one of the clueless masses and happily decided to look at it with my own eyes until everyone yelled at me to use the glasses. Actually I don’t think it could be properly seen with the naked eye.

But what I saw through the glasses was pretty spooky. The sky was black and there was a weird crescent of bright light, which I would have thought was the moon but was actually the sun being obscured by the moon. Pretty cool!

And just so that I always remember what it looked like… and you know what I saw, click here.

Is it just me or was there way more hype for this year’s Harry Potter movie? Maybe it’s because there aren’t any more books to look forward to and so the films are filling a void. Anyway, everyone seems to have an FB status message on their reaction to the film and many seem to have been let down. My thoughts:

Overall, I liked it. I needed a Potter fix and the film delivered. It didn’t wreak havoc with the book (though some may disagree) and added some interesting visuals.

Many people were upset that the director chose to focus on the teen mush over other elements in the book. I hated the awkwardness of the Harry-Cho stuff in both the fifth book and movie but loved it this time. Maybe I’m just in the mood for mush.

There were some complaints that not enough background on Tom Riddle was provided. This is true. One crucial memory they chose to edit out was the significance of the elements in the box in Tom’s cupboard in the orphanage, which ties into the location of the (assumed) Horcrux. Because this is not explained, there’s a gap there about how Dumbledore knew where it would be located. And there’s so much about why Voldemort is who he is now that comes through in the book – though I have a feeling they’re saving that for the split seventh book. Even so, I enjoyed the bits about the young Tom. The kid they cast in the role is seriously creepy.

I wasn’t as affected by Dumbledore’s death as I thought I would be. I remember weeping copiously both times I read the book but in the film it seemed somewhat anticlimactic. But maybe that’s because I was more prepared having read the seventh book where the reasons are explained.

It’s interesting to see the kids grow up. It seems like Hermione/Emma Watson is becoming the real star here, overshadowing Harry and Ron. I only hope she doesn’t have an eating disorder… she’s sooo thin. So is Harry/Daniel Radcliffe. Ron used to be my favourite but he’s grown up to be kind of puffy looking. Still he did a great job being moony on the love potion. And how creepy is Malfoy.

I’ve decided it’s completely pointless taking V to the films. He either falls asleep or keeps asking “when is this going to end?” I’m interested to know if there are fans of the film who have never read the books? I have met a couple of kids but that’s it. Because there really are so many gaps in the films that are filled in from prior knowledge of the books that I wonder how they stand independently.

At the end, V asked me what I found so fascinating about it all. I paused and then said that I loved how the books discuss fundamental values – the clash of good and evil, the purpose of life, the principle of “losing oneself to find oneself”, the value of friendship. V says even a good Bollywood blockbuster does this. That may be true. But what I love about HP is that it doesn’t arrive at these conclusions easily. It dwells on the grey areas, it colours in a wealth of detail. It draws on a history of mythogical and literary references. Maybe the truths it reiterates are the old ones but it makes them real and contemporary as well as fantastic and inspiring. After all, we’re in the 21st century. There may be nothing new left to be said, but it’s how you say it that matters.

Curly was in town last week. The latest I stayed out was 2 am but I am seriously tired. I had to sleep a lot the whole weekend and I’m still a bit zoned out. I am blaming it on the energy it takes to have a sore throat for two months and not, as Curly suggested, because I am a boring married person.

My work computer crashed yesterday. It was a long time coming. Every day at 5 pm, compy dearest used to whir loudly and then hang. My colleagues thought this was an amusing way of it telling me to go home. I, on the other hand, can identify a death cry when I hear one. I am now sitting at the desk of a colleague who is on leave in the line of sight of the big boss. It is very irritating to have to pretend to work when it’s summer and there’s really very little work. Also, this computer keeps switching the script to Chinese. It’s like the universe telling me to learn Chinese, only I am ignoring it and intuitively pressing buttons to change the language back instead.

I feel very little excitement over the new house, except over the possibility of selling it and making a pile of money. I know I will be thrilled when we actually move. But there’s so much to do before then and because I’m co-owner of the house I have to responsible about it also. Isn’t it enough that I am a responsible adult at work? Why do I have to be responsible in my private life as well?PS: I wrote the above yesterday, before I heard that V has told his folks they can visit the day after we move. Is it me, or is it completely whacko to have three guests and a two-year-old descend before you’ve finished unpacking? Now I’m glad I kept the excitement at bay.

My throat still hurts. Sometime near midnight I caved and crept out of bed to google pics of throat cancer. It looks horrible.

Since everyone I know in real life is sick of hearing me moan about my throat and give updates on whether I can swallow or not, I thought I’d inflict some of the grossness on you (even though some of you know me in real life and are going to complain that this throat stuff is going too deep. Ok bad pun).

When people ask me when the throat saga began, I tell them that I’ve had it for five weeks. This is the problem with not being able to count. I decide on a number and stick to it with scant consideration to the fact that as time passes, “five weeks” will no longer be valid (kind of like when I found out that my youngest cousin was eight years old, and for the next ten years continued to tell people she was eight).

In the interest of historical accuracy on this blog, I took a closer look at the calendar to date my illness. I know it started about two weeks before my sister visited. Which means that – get this – I’ve had a sore throat since around mid-May. Which makes it TWO MONTHS since I have had a sore throat.

Who has a sore throat for two months, I ask you? Except people who have cancer. So don’t blame me for suspecting that my few years of smoking had come back to bite me in the ass (well, throat).

Apart from the possibility of the Big C, I also routinely contemplate how doctors in HK are wholly incompetent. Can it be a coincidence that in this super-developed city, they are unable to knock off a common cold or sore throat in, let’s say just to be generous, two weeks?

I am no stranger to illness. So I pretty much know on average how long I will suffer from X, Y, Z common ailment. I also know what antibiotic I should be taking and at what strength (nothing below 500 mg works on me anymore). Now, I understand that HK is bit like a greenhouse and if you catch something it takes forever to go. But still!

To give you the history of my sore throat (so you can leave sympathetic comments and kind suggestions at the end), I’ve had chronic tonsillitis as a kid. Septic tonsils, fever every 15 days, no grapes and oranges, pepsi sticks, gola or playing Holi throughout childhood. As my pediatrician promised my mom when he refused to lop off my tonsils, I outgrew it. Then, I had sinusitis but that’s another story.

I haven’t had a serious sore throat till I came to HK. Then, in 2006 there was a stage where I would get one every month. Weirdly, fever rarely accompanied as it used to when I was a child.

Here, doctors are fond of dismissing everything as a viral. If it’s a viral, there’s no need to do anything about it. They give you painkillers and hope it will go away. It doesn’t. They reluctantly give you a mild antibiotic. Given that you are practically immune to anything milder than 500 mg, this only serves to subdue the symptoms. If you bother to go back, they will not up the antibiotic dosage. Rather they will give you a painkiller again. Now three weeks have gone by and you are still not completely ok. But you decide you’ve spent enough time at the doctor and your throat isn’t that bad so you don’t go back. The sore throat comes back the next month.

It doesn’t really occur to the doctors, who have your records on their computer and all, that there’s something weird about a person who has a sore throat every month. Yours truly finally suggests to them that maybe it’s due to the period (yeah, my period doesn’t bring enough horrors, I have to have a sore throat as well). Eureka! Because your immunity is low, you’re prone to catching viruses, says doctor. So what do I do? Err, exercise and eat healthy. Right.

Somehow I managed to evade a sore throat for a whole year. My friend introduced me to this Chinese medicine thing and if I felt one coming on, I’d start taking that and manage to stave it off.

However, I was a little careless this year. I tried the herbal stuff but the sore throat came and stayed. Now, given my attitude to doctors in HK (and can you blame me? I’ve so far been to at least five and none have managed to effectively deal with any ailment I’ve had… whether it’s a cold or a skin problem) I didn’t want to bother going.

However, my sister was flying in from San Fransisco and given the paranoia about swine flu and the fact that my symptoms sounded scarily similar (I had a tummy upset by then too), I decided to go to the doctor. Basically, I wanted a record that I had these symptoms before my sister came.

Thus started the usual painkiller, mild antibiotics, painkiller routine. Three weeks passed. My throat was slightly better, though not fully fine, so I didn’t bother going back. A week of peace and sore throat returns.

Fed up of Western medicine docs, I decide to see a Chinese medicine doctor. He can’t speak English and someone has to come in to translate. He tells me I have a cold. I don’t. But maybe in his wisdom he knows best. He gives me some disgusting concoctions. I drink it twice a day for four days. My tummy is slightly better for the first two, then not. The throat is the same.

I go back to the Western medicine doc. Another three weeks of painkiller, mild antibiotics, painkiller. I am now immune to the painkillers.

Somewhere in between, a friend (on Facebook, if you please) suggests that the problem could be in my nose. If I have a stuffy nose (even though I don’t have a cold), I will breathe through my mouth. This will make my throat very prone to infections. I do have a stuffy nose. I never realised noses were for breathing until I was in primary school and we learnt about it in class. Till then, I thought they were just a rather unfortunate occurrence on one’s face.

After (what’s it now?) six weeks, the doc raises the possibility of it being my nose. Eureka again… but, isn’t it strange that a totally unqualified person could diagnose this on Facebook and not someone who’s been through years of med school? Despite the doc prescribing something to unstuff my nose, I get worse.

Finally, a friend shouts at me. Why are you wasting your time with these stupid GPs. Go to a specialist. In order to have insurance cover the specialist, I have to be referred by my GP. So I go back to her and tell her I’d like to see a specialist. “I was just going to suggest that. I won’t keep you tied to me if you don’t think I can help you.” Um, but that’s what you did.

Go to an ENT. He takes one look at my throat and diagnoses a fungal infection. Having high glucose levels or diabetes could make me prone to this (nooo! How will I survive without chocolate). I do have a problem with my nose but it’s not the cause of this. A bonus is that he puts a camera down my throat and I get to see the goop there. He calls it “cheesy”.

He prescribes some drops, which are entirely painless (compared to antibiotics which make me want to throw up. I’ve taken to resorting to taking B complex with them, something my GP in India used to insist on and which I hated doing because it’s one more tablet and it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. But they do help with the nausea… again, HK docs never prescribe B complex though they do prescribe lozenges. Go figure). I feel better in two days.

Luckily, my glucose level is normal. But I am slightly anaemic. I now have to test for that and thalassaemia. I suspect it’s the latter. The throat infection has not gone. But the good news is I don’t have cancer. The doc told me this after I asked him if he was sure it was just a fungal infection. He said if I had cancer he’d see stuff around my voice box. It’s clear so yay.

Since I moved to HK, I am constantly troubled by this sense of belonging to nowhere.

Not because I don’t feel at home anywhere but because I now feel at home in two places. I have also loved Bombay and felt most at home there. I never really wanted to leave the city, the way some people always aspire to live elsewhere.

But Hong Kong is a hard city not to love. I’m a complete city girl and HK epitomises city-ness for me. It’s beautiful, efficient, stylish, quirky, cultured, old and new. If I could speak the language, I’d be set.

But I’ve always maintained that Bombay is home.

However, as the years go by, every time I visit Bombay I’m rankled by the chaos. I find myself grumbling more about the inefficiency and the dirt like a true NRI. I still love my building and my friends and the pubs we go to and the food but I’m beginning to believe I couldn’t go back and live there and be happy.

Then V came back from a trip to Bombay with some pics of the streets, Juhu beach, gola wallahs etc. And I was almost teary eyed with longing. All I could think was – I have to go home, I have to go home.

And now, I’ve been asked to write something for the staff mag on a place in India and I decided to write about Goa because I don’t have any pics of Bombay. Actually, I don’t really have too many pics of Goa either, except that I went there for my honeymoon so I had some photographs.

Unfortunately, when I started looking for the pics on my comp, I couldn’t find them. And I couldn’t find my wedding photos either. Weirdly:a) I was more concerned about the honeymoon photos than the wedding photosb) I was more concerned about having no photos for work than losing photos of the wedding/honeymoon (which gives you a sense of how thrilled I was about my wedding. Hmmm I have to restart that Wedding series).

Anyway, I have thrown myself at the mercy of my friends for photos. And just in case people have more photos of Bombay, I started doing a write up on Bombay.

I realised that there’s tons to do in Bombay (well for a few days), contrary to my view that there’s nothing touristy in Bombay. But what’s worse, I started looking at photos of Flickr and getting more and more homesick.

Now I’m more confused than ever. I could have two home cities, but that doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

It’s like when we’re travelling and people ask us where we’re from and we say India. And then they start asking us stuff about India and where we live and finally we go: “oh but we live in Hong Kong.” Ugh.

Pst: Any generous soul that has photos of Bombay or Goa (beaches, buildings, shopping, churches, roadside stalls etc) and feels kind enough to send me some will be much loved. They’re only going to be used in the staff mag.

I haven’t seen much build-up to this. Yes, gay rights groups have been campaigning against Section 377 for a long time. And then suddenly, in one fell swoop, the court decided to strike down the outdated law. Yay!

What I like most is the wording of the judgment which says that criminilising homosexuality was a violation of fundamental rights and a right to full personhood.

It seems too good to be true though (thinks the eternal cynic in me). I’m pretty sure someone will appeal. But even if someone does, the precedent has been set and it’s a powerful weapon for gay rights activists.

I was also surprised by the Church’s stand. Apparently, the Church has never been for criminilising homosexuality (though they don’t morally approve of it). Which is pretty good considering it’s the Church. Of course, some reports quoted the Church representative as saying that homosexuality increases paedophelia. That strikes me as quite ironic, if it’s true (Indian reporters can never be trusted to get anything right). Considering the Church’s own record with paedophelia one would think that it would steer clear of that topic.

At the end of the every news report, in the comments section, the bigots were in full form, decrying the destruction of Indian culture and citing Sodom and Gomorrah. Whenever I check the comment sections, it seems like only the most ardent conservatives use it as their venting ground. It’s scary to think that there are people all around you with so much hate in their systems.

And speaking of personal laundry on the Internet (ha, I’m a prime example but nvm), I’ve been using this expat forum to sell some of our furniture before we move house. And then I noticed that there are discussion threads on such topics as “Is my boyfriend cheating on me” and “Is my husband having an Internet affair.”

It’s so weird. Why would one pose these questions to complete strangers? Why would one expect anyone to respond? But people do. And everyone just jumps in drawing on their own personal baggage. The women, who have gone through similar experiences, will be like: “Yes he is, dump him immediately” and the guys will go: “must be porn, turn a blind eye” or “guys need their space”. It’s scary to think that people might actually follow this kind of advice.

At least with blogging, if you’re writing about your own life, there’s some amount of continuity and space for broader explanations. And your readers tend to have followed you for some time so they have some background.

Anyway, the discussions were good timepass. Another way to while away the hours.